testified their piety to the gods, their devotion to their princes, their gratitude to their benefactors; that, finally, magistrates and private persons spread abroad in public all they wished to communicate to it. That is why the inscriptions were then so frequent, and explains how they survive to us in so great a number, though so many must have perished; the Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum already comprises more then two hundred thousand and is not yet completed. Sainte-Beueve was quite right in saying: 'The true Moniteur of the Romans must be sought in the innumerable pages of marble and bronze on which they graved their laws and their victories.'
II
Literary publicity. Of what means the Roman writers availed themselves for the advertisement of their works. Readings during repasts. At the Forum. In the halls of the baths. In the grammar schools. Institution of public readings. The announcements of booksellers. How books were circulated in the provinces.
But placards cannot suffice for everything, and there are services whcih they can only render imperfectly. Only to cite one example, I ask myself how, without other aid, literary reputations could have been made and propagated at Rome and throughout the Empire. This is, it seems to us to-day, the special business of the press, and for more than two centuries it has taken upon itself this office. In 1665 a councillor of the Parliament of Paris, Denis de Sallo, founded the Journal des Savants, to inform people of an inquiring turn of mind, by extracts or analysis, of the important works appearing all over the world.[1] Then came the Mercure, which devoted its attention to works of a lighter order. It wwas the grandsire of our minor press, and it cannot be said to be of yesterday, since it has had, all things allowed, two hundred and thirty years of existence. During the whole of the eighteenth century the journals and newsletters never ceased to keep the public informed of the literary gossip of the day. It was by them
- ↑ It must be remarked that the Journal des Savants, as well as the Gazette and Les Petites Affiches, still exist.
